Yunji Jang Solo Exhibition

August 9 – 13, 2017
M Gallery, CICA Museum

Statement

When an artwork is created, the physical limits of it are highlighted by the edge, crop or frame of the piece. No artwork is limitless in its size, and every artist, editor or curator must make a conscious decision on where the artwork must end.
The boundaries and questions set forth by the ‘framing’ of the piece are common themes in my work. Where does the ‘frame’ begin and the art work end?, can the ‘frame’ become its own form of art by reconstruction?, and how does one go about fusing or blurring the distinctions made by the artwork and its frame?- these are questions I begin to answer and hope to expand on with my work.
Stretched canvas over wooden frames have been the foundation on which classically trained painters have been using to paint on for centuries. Modern artists too have used them in all manner of forms. It is my hope and intention to take this age old object that has served as a valuable foundation for artists and reassert its original intention with the use of 21st century techniques and technology.
My work allows for both pigment and frame to fuse together on an atomic level. Suddenly not only are the distinctions between the artwork and frame put to question, but also what might the distinctions between painting and sculpture be?
In this series I focus on transforming copper metal plating fused with a deconstructed canvas frame. The stretcher bars are limited only by the absence of frame and not forced into linear or angled form. The frame can displace and extend into the convex and concave space and at it’s most extreme, the spherical space. This gives the powerful component that the canvas is falling into itself, blurring the lines between where the canvas frame begins and where it eventually ends.
The regeneration of the canvas frame allows me to gratefully nod to it’s history and the painters I admire that have used it. My reinterpretation of its form, the minimalist approach to the painting aesthetic and the new questions I hope that it creates are all expressions of beauty and wonder that are important to me.

August, 2017

Yunji Jang is an artist based in Seoul and London. She received her MFA from the University of the Arts London, Chelsea College of Art and Design and received her BFA in Painting from the University of Brighton. Yunji have shown her works in Seoul, Jeju, London, and Brighton.